Numbers Low, Interest High At U.s. Snooker Tourney

Forest Hills, Pebble Beach-in the annals of U.S. Opens, such venerable venues have become linked indelibly to great sporting championships.

Add Pockets Billiards to that list.

Venerable it may not be, but the billiards hall tucked into a corner of the Fox Valley Mall in Aurora is the site of the U.S. Open of snooker sponsored by the United States Snooker Association. The double-elimination tournament ends Sunday at 4 p.m. The winner will bag the U.S. Open title as well as a trip in October to the world championships in Malta.

Pockets is the ideal site for two reasons: It has two tables (even one is rare in most pool-dominated American billiards halls) and it is convenient to Oak Brook tournament organizer Michael Collins, a transplanted Briton with a passion for snooker and the president of the USSA.

The British game, with thousands of recreational players, has barely caught on in the U.S. ``We`re now finding out the numbers are in the hundreds,`` smiles the optimistic Collins, who entered the tournament only to round out the field.

There`s no thick smoke or aura of high-stakes hustling. In fact, there are only 16 players, all of varying abilities, and all assembled and brought to Aurora by Collins for the second annual event.

They include a Harwood Heights grandmother and pool aficionado who once won the Illinois state women`s nine-ball title; a Yugoslavian emigre who manages the New York Athletic Club`s billiards operation and has won snooker tournaments in Canada and the U.S.; and the smoothly named Tom Kollins, manager of a River Grove billiards establishment and winner of last year`s USSA title.

``I like snooker better. It`s more a game of finesse and less of power,`` says Shirley Weathers, the only woman entered in this competition.

``I fell in love with the game. In the beginning I loved pool, but this is a bigger challenge,`` says Isa Ismaili, who traveled from Brooklyn to play. ``It`s harder to make any kind of a shot.``

Kollins, an amateur, won the title of U.S. champion from a field of 10 entrants in 1991 and gained a berth in the world championships in Thailand. Though he didn`t place high, he earned the moniker ``the portly gentleman``

from his British snooker-fellows.

The mustachioed, 50-ish Chicagoan looked the part as competition opened at Pockets. Dressed in a dinner jacket and bow tie, Kollins, one of the top two tournament seeds, was simply following International Billiards and Snooker Federation regulations, which stipulate competitors show up in coat and tie

(though Weathers didn`t have to don a cravat).

``You want to maintain a certain charisma and charm around the game, and we want to play the game the way it`s been played,`` explains Collins.

They may, however, shed the coat while playing.

Good thing, for snooker-played on a 12-foot-by-6-foot table-can require a variety of stretches to maneuver a shot.

The game pits two players against one another using a cue, cue balls, and object balls similar to pool, only smaller.

Six colored balls worth different numbers of points are placed at specific spots on the table with 15 red balls, which are placed in a triangle and broken in the opening shot. Reds and colored balls are pocketed alternately to accumulate a score.

One of the frequently cited challenges of snooker is the table`s narrow pocket openings. If a ball isn`t struck just right, it will bounce off the pocket opening`s sides and sit on the table, refusing to drop. Strategy is said to be more complex, as well.

A variation on 19th-century British pocket billiards, snooker started in 1875 by the officers of an English regiment serving in India. The game caught on.

Top prize for last year`s world championship finals was $480,000, going to England`s Stephen Hendry, the world`s best player.

What Collins describes as the quintessential ``English gentleman`s game`` has its eccentricities. Last year`s British Open featured competitors decked out in 18th-century European costumes to celebrate the spirit of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, said to be a devotee of carom billiards.